A London man’s left leg was amputated after he suffered burns while giving himself a pedicure in July 2023. According to the Daily Mail, Olubiyi Jibowu, who is a father of one, had used Himalayan salt to run a bath as he wanted his feet to be smoother for the summer.
But unbeknownst to the 57-year-old at the time, he had type 2 diabetes – a condition which makes it difficult for affected patients to feel pain. As a result, he was unaware the water was extremely hot and had resulted in his feet developing blisters.
Jibowu initially did not go to a medical facility to get medical care, and he used dettol to treat the burns, thinking that it was going to help remedy his condition. But that did not work, and he ended up going to seek treatment at a medical facility. That was when medical officials established he had developed sepsis – which is the body’s extreme reaction to an infection.
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“I initially thought, these are just blisters, they’ve peeled and they’re a bit sore. I didn’t want them to get infected, so I thought Dettol would make it better. That’s what my mum used to do. She would put a drop here and there, but I kept pouring it on,” he recalled.
“It was pain I can’t even describe. I’m a big guy, but it was just too much. The skin eventually shrivelled up and was just torn apart. It went all black. I could see the fragments of my bone structure on my feet.”
He added: “The left foot just wasn’t healing. I went to work one day and showed my manager, and she sent me home immediately. I called my sister, and I was in severe pain. She could hear it in my voice that I needed urgent help. My skin was falling off. I went to King’s Hospital in London and I just thought, this will pass, it will get better but it didn’t.”
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Jibowu was ultimately diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at the hospital. “The moment I got there, I knew it was serious. It was rapidly deteriorating. They wrapped it [my feet] up and pumped me full of antibiotics, but there was no healing,” he said.
Medics ultimately told the 57-year-old that his leg had to be amputated after he spent weeks in the hospital, the Daily Mail reported.
“I was in a state of shock; my mind was all over the place,” he said. “I didn’t want the consultant who talked about that anywhere near me. I really believed there could be a better solution, not amputation straight away. I said, ‘Are you telling me there’s no plan B to turn this around?’ I was just so taken aback.”
Jibowu’s leg was amputated in August 2023. “The moment the amputation happened, it relieved the pain I was feeling, but I was struggling with acceptance,” he said.
“I thought, am I going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life? It was a really hard pill to swallow. I couldn’t even cry. It was just life-changing. The prosthetic was a light at the end of the tunnel. After spending two months at King’s, I was admitted to a prosthetic place where I had to learn how to walk again and manoeuvre myself in a wheelchair. It was intense because I had all this therapy and physios.”
Jibowu has since set up a GoFundMe to help raise funds to purchase a prosthetic leg and to cover his rehabilitation expenses.
